Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Once again,
the dream team of Arche is blogging to give you a sense of our
weekly activities. So, every Thursday afternoon, our resourceful and ‘hands-on’
programme manager Ross visits the team and helps us to think of innovative ways
that we can construct new resources for the workshops here at Arche
Nongr-Maasem, without breaking the bank. This guarantees that we always make the most of the limited materials we have on offer,
whilst simultaneously inspiring our partners at Arche to think outside the box
when looking for new activities. An example would be when we used old plastic
water sachets, sand, glue and scraps of fabric to create bean bags, which the
residents of Arche use during sporting activities. Not only does this provide
the centre with more resources, it also allows the residents to practice their
arts and crafts skills by sieving the sand, cutting the fabric, and for those
with finer motor skills, to sew closed the fabric covers. Other activities
included ensuring the whole centre is accessible for the residents with limited
mobility by constructing ramps made from a combination of mud and sand.

This
Thursday afternoon, as we are always thinking of ways to improve Arche, we
began to paint the walls of the occupational workshop. We chose painting as it
is an activity everyone can join in with. Unfortunately, the first task
involved cleaning the area, which was covered with saharran dust and cobwebs.
Therefore, we blasted the walls with water to clean them and in the process
woke up some angry African bees (tense moment for those involved – Pete let out
an audible whimper).

We
discovered the fact that we have two world-class painters in the team (Andrew
and Yves). The boys got busy and before long we had covered the main walls with
two coats of bright white paint, effectively providing us with a blank canvas
that the centre residents can help us to decorate with drawings. Now it is for
them to decide which design they would like. The head assistant has requested
blue Arche logos, so next week we will be using cardboard and scissors to
create stencils in our occupational therapy session before adding colour and
artistic features. So make sure you
don’t miss our next publication, if you would like to know what will become of
the workshop.